Microsoft announced its acquisition of Avere Systems, a Pittsburgh based company which provides fast data access for hybrid cloud infrastructures.

　　Jason Zander, Corporate Vice President at Microsoft Azure, said:

　　Today, I am pleased to share that Microsoft has signed an agreement to acquire Avere Systems, a leading provider of high-performance NFS and SMB file-based storage for Linux and Windows clients running in cloud, hybrid and on-premises environments.

　　Avere uses an innovative combination of file system and caching technologies to support the performance requirements for customers who run large-scale compute workloads. In the media and entertainment industry, Avere has worked with global brands including Sony Pictures Imageworks, animation studio Illumination Mac Guff and Moving Picture Company (MPC) to decrease production time and lower costs in a world where innovation and time to market is more critical than ever.

　　High performance computing needs however do not stop there. Customers in life sciences, education, oil and gas, financial services, manufacturing and more are increasingly looking for these types of solutions to help transform their businesses. The Library of Congress, Johns Hopkins University and Teradyne, a developer and supplier of automatic test equipment for the semiconductor industry, are great examples where Avere has helped scale datacenter performance and capacity, and optimize infrastructure placement.

　　By bringing together Avere’s storage expertise with the power of Microsoft’s cloud, customers will benefit from industry-leading innovations that enable the largest, most complex high-performance workloads to run in Microsoft Azure. We are excited to welcome Avere to Microsoft, and look forward to the impact their technology and the team will have on Azure and the customer experience.

　　Avere Systems CEO Ron Bianchini also shared some thoughts via a blog post on the company's website.

　　Today, I am excited to announce that Avere Systems will be joining Microsoft to continue our mission to enable the most demanding Enterprise workloads to run in the datacenter, in the cloud and in hybrid cloud environments. Avere’s customers include many of the world’s top brands in media and entertainment, life sciences, technology and finance.

　　Over the years, Microsoft has made significant investments to provide its customers with the most flexible, secure and scalable storage solutions in the marketplace and has made Azure the natural home for enterprise applications. This shared focus on large Enterprise applications makes Microsoft a great fit for Avere.

　　Avere and Microsoft both recognize that there are many ways for Enterprises to leverage data center resources and the cloud. Our shared vision is to continue our focus on all of Avere’s use cases - in the datacenter, in the cloud and in hybrid cloud storage and cloud bursting environments. Tighter integration with Azure will result in a much more seamless experience for our customers.

　　Microsoft confirmed that it will continue supporting third-party cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), though obviously Avere will focus on integrating Microsoft Azure into its platform.

　　It will be interesting to see whether the application can also benefit Microsoft's attempt at real time cloud computing for games. This was once a focus for the Xbox One console, though we still have to see its first application in a game. That could happen this year with Crackdown 3, provided that its destruction focused Arena multiplayer mode is still alive and well.